by Dinah McCall
The lawyer spoke up.
“We’ll file for an immediate release. He’s already served the time for his only crime.”
“That’s up to the D.A.,” Trey said.
Sheree wiped her hands across her face, then stood and walked to the window.
Foster wouldn’t look up.
And they were back where they’d begun, Trey thought. Until the tests came back on Sheree Collier, they would have no way of knowing which child had died and which one had been returned to Marcus Sealy.
Sheree Collier suddenly turned.
“Detective Bonney, why can’t you trace Laree’s whereabouts by her social security number?”
“That’s how we found you, but all the activity on her number ended the same month that the kidnapping and murders occurred.”
“Do you think she’s dead?” she asked.
“I don’t think anything,” Trey said. “I operate in facts.”
“Then where did she go? Where has she been? If she’s still alive, she would have had to work to survive.”
“She could have taken another identity,” Foster said. “Guys in the joint did that a lot. It’s easier than you think.”
Sheree frowned. “Is that true, Detective?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Oh God, how will we ever find her? How will we ever know?”
“I don’t know, ma’am,” Trey said. “But thanks to you and your brother, we know a whole lot more than we did this time last week. At least now we know who to look for.”
“But all these years have gone by. If she’s gained weight or gone gray, she would look different. I color my hair the same color it was when I was younger and my own brother didn’t even recognize me,” Sheree said.
“We could use a picture of you as you are now, fool around with different hair color, add or subtract weight from the facial area, and maybe come up with a passable likeness.”
“Why not?” Sheree asked. “I already feel as if I’m a traitor. Maybe if I let you bleed me dry, I won’t have to face what I’ve done.”
“No, sis,” Foster said. “It wasn’t you. It was us. We made the mistakes.”
“Then why do I feel so awful?”
Foster couldn’t answer. There was nothing left to say.
19
It was getting dark by the time Trey got home. Ella was in the yard watering the geraniums in the planters on either side of his doorstep. He grinned to himself as he saw her, dressed in her red pants and blouse. A perfect match for the red blooms she was watering.
“Hey, good looking,” Trey said, as he came up the walk.
“Hello, yourself,” Ella said, and turned off the water, then rolled up the hose. “I made a casserole. It’s warming in the oven. There’s a banana cream pie in the fridge and salad stuff in the crisper. You’re getting low on milk, and you’re almost out of eggs. I started a list. It’s on the cabinet.”
“Lord, Ella, I didn’t intend for you to take me to raise. I just didn’t want Livvie to be by herself until she got a little stronger.”
Ella’s mouth pursed as she put her hands on her hips.
“I only did what I wanted to do. Besides, I haven’t felt this useful in years. It’s a nice feeling. Don’t mess it up for me.”
Trey grinned. “Okay. Point taken. Still, don’t work so much, okay?”
“Whatever,” Ella muttered. “Your sweetie is out back in the pool. Her grandfather was here, too.”
“Marcus? Is he still here?”
“No. He left after I beat him playing poker.”
The grin on Trey’s face shifted. “You were playing poker?”
“Yes.”
“For matches, right?”
“Lord, no. For money.” She patted her pocket. “Won almost two hundred dollars off him. I left him enough to get home on, though. I’m not completely heartless.”
“Crap,” Trey muttered.
“What?”
“I’m a cop. You’re gambling in my home. I think there’s a problem somewhere in this, but I’m too damn tired to care.”
Ella sniffed. “Don’t get your britches in a wad. It won’t happen again, but mostly because I don’t think Marcus Sealy is a fool. I beat him once. He won’t make the same mistake twice.”
“For whatever reason, I thank you for the end to the gambling,” Trey said.
“You’re welcome. I’m going home now. It’s almost time for my favorite show. Enjoy your evening. Tell Olivia that I’ll see her tomorrow.”
“Okay. Thanks again,” Trey said, and hurried into his house as Ella crossed the lawn toward her home.
The house was filled with the homey scents of the food Ella had been cooking, as well as a faint odor of lemon furniture polish. There was an energy in the air that had been missing before Olivia’s arrival, as if the house had come to life on its own. But Trey knew it was more than the people who’d been in it. It was the love growing between himself and Livvie that made the house feel like a home.
He closed the door behind him as he entered, quickly took off his jacket and hung it on a hook by the door, then slipped out of his shoulder holster, and put it in a drawer in his desk. He glanced out the kitchen window, saw Olivia in the pool floating in an oversize inner tube. He couldn’t see much of the black bikini she was wearing, but it was enough to entice him to join her. A few minutes later, he came out of his room wearing his swimsuit and a grin.
Olivia heard the squeak of the storm door but couldn’t bring herself to open her eyes. Whatever it was, Ella would certainly let her know.
Then she heard water splash. Surely to God Ella hadn’t fallen in! She turned just as a pair of long tan legs disappeared beneath the water. Seconds later, Trey came up right beside her. Water had slicked his thick, dark hair close to his head and was dripping off his lashes like tears. But there was nothing sad about his face. He was grinning from ear to ear. Olivia couldn’t help but join him.
“Hey you,” she said, and flipped water in his face.
“Hey yourself,” he said, then pushed her inner tube to the side of the pool, where he could stand beside her.
Olivia told herself not to stare, but her brain wasn’t listening. There was no way to ignore the broad span of Trey’s arms and shoulders, or the flat six-pack of belly muscles. She’d wondered more than once how the boy’s body had matured into a man’s. Now she knew.
She was smiling as her gaze moved back up to Trey’s face, but then she saw him frown and automatically reached toward her gunshot wound, trying to hide it.
Trey grabbed her hand, then turned it palm up to his mouth and kissed it—a long, lingering kiss warmed by his breath upon her skin. She stifled a moan.
She wanted him. As a seventeen-year-old girl, she’d known the boy intimately. She wanted to know the man even more.
“Trey…”
“Shh,” he whispered, then turned her inner tube so her back was to him.
She felt his lips brush her neck, then the back of her ear; then his mouth trailed down her shoulder to the place where the bullet had gone in. He paused. She heard a sharp intake of breath; then Trey wrapped his arms around her and laid his face against the top of her head.
“Trey?”
“Not yet,” he said.
His voice was trembling.
“I’m fine,” she said softly.
“Jesus Christ, Livvie…I’m not, okay? Just let me hold you.”
She leaned her head back against his chest and closed her eyes. Despite the trauma she’d suffered, she would never be sorry it had happened. Not when it had been the vehicle that brought Trey back into her life.
Trey swallowed past the knot in his throat as he tried to contain his emotions. The sight of that red, angry wound on her body had hit him like a slap to the face, and with it had come rage. He’d had his hands around that crazy bastard’s neck. All he would have had to do was give it a twist. It would have ended Dennis Rawlins’s reign of terror and saved the state of Texas the cost of h
ousing the son of a bitch. But he hadn’t done it—and he knew that he would regret the hesitation for as long as he lived.
Finally Trey moved. Olivia felt him shudder, then heard him take a slow, deep breath.
She leaned her head back until she was looking at him upside down; then she grinned.
“You look funny upside down.”
“So do you,” he countered, knowing she was teasing him to try to change the tenseness of the mood.
“Wanna race?” she asked.
“What I want has nothing to do with a swimming pool,” he said.
Olivia’s smile stilled; then she let her gaze slide from his face to his chest, then to the distorted shape of his body beneath the water.
“I thought you swam in the nude.”
“Just say the word,” he countered.
She didn’t have the guts to call his bluff. When she finally looked up, Trey’s eyes were dark, his face expressionless.
Trey’s mind was in chaos. He wanted to make love to her, but she was in no shape for anything but a kiss. Then she surprised him with a question he wasn’t expecting.
“Does what you’re wanting from me have anything to do with a bed?”
Trey’s nostrils flared.
“That is so not funny.”
“You don’t see me laughing, do you?”
“We can’t do that…yet.”
“Why? He shot my shoulder, not my ass.”
Trey blinked. She’d surprised him.
“You know, Livvie, you’ve changed some since your high-school days.”
“If you mean I’m not afraid to say what I’m thinking, then you’re right. You’ve graciously allowed me a second chance with you. I want everything that comes with that, including making love with you.”
“God, Livvie. You think I don’t? But one of us has to hold on to a little sanity. Trust me, when you get well, you may be wishing you’d never started this fire again.”
“I am well…well enough.” Then she slid out of the inner tube and walked toward him. “See? I’m standing before you. On my own two feet. Shamelessly begging you.”
“You don’t have to beg,” Trey said.
“I don’t?”
The taunt pushed him over.
“Okay, woman. You win. Get your hot body out of my pool and into my house. I’ll give you two minutes to get from the back door to my bed.”
Olivia started climbing out of the pool. She reached for her towel as he slid his fingers beneath the back of the bra of her two-piece suit. It popped open and fell off her shoulders before she knew it was undone.
She turned, her hands automatically going to cover herself as her eyes widened in surprise. The passion on his face was startling, then exciting.
Her hands were on her breasts. Trey wanted them on him.
“One minute,” Trey said.
She looked down at the bra lying on the concrete, then turned and headed for the back door. Seconds after she was inside, she heard the door slam, then the click of a lock. Before she knew it, he was right behind her.
She paused in the hall, uncertain which bedroom to go to.
“Time’s up,” Trey said, and scooped her into his arms and carried her into his bedroom. He stood her up long enough to pull the bottom part of her swimsuit off, then pulled back the covers and gently laid her down in the middle of his bed.
“Trey, we’re getting everything all wet.”
“Wet is good.”
She shivered.
He pulled his trunks down, then stepped out of them, leaving them where they lay.
For a few moments Olivia stared her fill of his body and at the water droplets clinging to his skin and hair.
“Don’t move,” he said softly, and crawled into bed.
Breath caught in the back of her throat as he straddled her legs, then rocked back on his heels.
She started to reach for him, then winced.
“Dammit, Livvie…I told you not to move.”
“Dammit back, Trey Bonney. I want to touch you and hold you. I want to know what it’s like to be loved again.”
He went down on his hands and knees, kneeling over her while keeping the weight of his body off her.
“Ah, sweetheart, I’ll show you all that and more. Just close your eyes and enjoy the ride.”
Olivia did as she was told.
At first she felt nothing except the give of the mattress on either side of her body from the weight of his hands and knees.
Then something warm moved across the peaks of her breasts, and she knew it was his breath. He wasn’t touching her, but she knew he was there. Her heart skipped a beat.
The warmth moved slowly from her breasts down past her rib cage, lingering at her belly button; then something wet swirled around the edge before dipping in.
She moaned. It was his tongue.
He moved lower, pausing at the juncture of her thighs. She felt the heat of his body and instinctively tried to open for him to come in. As she did, displaced water droplets from her own body shook free and rolled off her skin.
Again she heard him whisper.
“Olivia…don’t move.”
She was shivering now, wanting to touch him—to touch herself.
But there was no contact as he moved past her offering.
Now the heat from his breath was on her thighs, then her knees. When she suddenly felt his hands encircling her ankles, she stifled a scream.
“Easy,” he whispered. “Let me.”
He gripped her ankles, then loosened his touch enough to run his hands up to her knees, then back down to her ankles, skimming the surface of her skin just enough to remind her he was there.
Olivia shuddered.
“Trey…Trey.”
“Shh.”
She sighed and once again followed his directions.
He stroked her legs, slowly, intently. First up. Then down. Then up again. Then back down. Over and over, his fingers moved upon her skin, until she was lulled into a false sense of security.
Suddenly his fingers were encircling her ankles and he was pulling her legs apart.
She gasped. Finally.
But he didn’t take her. Not yet. Not then.
“Have mercy,” Olivia whispered.
“Is that what you want?” she heard him ask. “Do you want me to stop?”
“No. God, no.”
She thought she heard him laugh, but the blood was hammering so hard against her eardrums that she could have been mistaken.
His hands were on her thighs now, rubbing up, then smoothing down, then sliding back up to the juncture without touching her where it ached.
Over and over. Up and then down.
Again he lulled her into a false sense of security. Just when her bones were beginning to turn to water, he pulled her legs up and gently bent her knees. Before she could think, his thumb was on her center.
She tried to arch toward it, but he wouldn’t let her up. His voice was barely a whisper she had to strain to hear.
“I told you, Livvie, don’t move. Don’t move.”
Then his fingers were on the nub, and he was rubbing. Up and then down. Around and around.
Olivia was holding her breath, but she didn’t even know it until he told her to breathe, and when she did, lights popped behind her closed eyelids, like fireworks on the Fourth of July.
“Trey.”
The panic in her voice was almost his undoing. He couldn’t put his weight on any part of her body without fear of causing her pain, while he was nothing but one big ache.
He wanted in her so bad he couldn’t think, yet somehow he managed to hold himself back.
And still he rubbed. Up and then down. Around and around.
The pressure was building fast, pushing downward to the pit of Olivia’s belly, then farther down—all the way down to where his hand lay on her body, where her blood pulsed against his fingers in a hard and constant rhythm.
Olivia started to beg him; then speech became imp
ossible. The fire he’d been fanning suddenly burst beneath his touch. Her chin came up, her head rolled back. Trey rose far enough up to press his mouth against her lips, catching the scream he’d heard coming.
He held her then, captured only by his mouth upon her lips and his hand upon her body, and when he felt the last trembling spasm sliding through her, he raised himself up on his hands, made a place for himself between her legs and moved in.
Olivia was immobile. He’d melted her as surely as if he’d set fire to her skin and then nailed her to the bed. He was in her now, pushing in, then pulling out. Completely satiated, weak and spent, she could do nothing but lie there.
He was bigger than she’d remembered—and so hard. Yet when he moved, it was like silk sliding within her. Just like in high school, they were still a perfect fit. He rocked her where she lay, in a rhythm perfect to the beating of her heart.
And when he came, she cried—for the loss of all those years they might have had together, and from the joy of loving him again.
One moment Trey had been sound asleep in the bed with Olivia curled up in his arms; the next he was sitting straight up in bed without knowing the reason why. He listened closely to the sounds of the house, trying to figure out if he’d heard something in his sleep that had awakened him, but everything was silent. He glanced at the clock. It was just after two in the morning.
Olivia rolled over, her expression confused and her voice raspy as she asked, “What’s happening? Is something wrong?”
“No, baby, everything is just fine. Go back to sleep.”
She closed her eyes as Trey got out of bed.
His wet swimsuit was on the floor where he’d left it. He picked it up, carried it into the bathroom and tossed it over the shower rod to dry. A pair of his shorts were hanging from a hook on the back of the bathroom door. He pulled them on and then headed out of his bedroom, intent on searching the house. Instinct had awakened him, and he wouldn’t be satisfied until he knew everything was okay.
The house was quiet, as were the streets outside. Nothing had been disturbed. Still, he took his gun out of the drawer and did a quick check of the yard, making sure that all the screens were in place and the doors still locked. Once he was satisfied that all was well, he started back inside the house. That was when he noticed the lights were on at Ella’s. He frowned. That was odd.